News
Apple iPhone X Unboxing
I had woken up extra early last Friday 27 October when the iphone X first went on pre-order and on the stroke of 08.00 GMT, I placed my order via the Apple website paying the inflated UK price of £999 with Apple Pay and held my breath. Many were not as lucky with pre-orders selling out in minutes but my order went through successfully and in the process I booked a store pickup reservation at 1.00 PM today at the Apple Store on Regent Street in London. Press and social media earlier were full of photos of thousands of people queuing outside stores in London, Tokyo, Sydney and around the world eager to get their hands on Apple’s most expensive smartphone so far. When we arrived at 1.00 PM for our appointment thankfully the queues had died down but the store was still packed to the gunnels a...
Apple iOS 11.1: what Accessibility improvements are included?
Whilst blind users and people with dyslexia will welcome several improvements to VoiceOver there is nothing new in this iOS 11.1 update for physically disabled users, which will disappoint some. VoiceOver is a screen reader built into iOS. By using VoiceOver, users can access their iOS device based on spoken descriptions. The feature is designed to increase accessibility for blind and low-vision users, as well as users with dyslexia. Here are the release notes detailing the Accessibility improvements that Apple provided for iOS 11.1: Improves braille support for Grade 2 input Improves VoiceOver access to multi-page PDFs Improves VoiceOver rotor actions for announcing incoming notifications Improves VoiceOver rotor actions menu when removing an app from the App Switcher Fixes an issue for s...
Review: Apple Watch 3 fails physically disabled users
“Answer a call from your surfboard. Ask Siri to send a message. Stream your favourite songs on your run. And do it all while leaving your phone behind. Introducing Apple Watch Series 3 with cellular connectivity.” This is how Apple describes its new Watch Series 3 cellular and it was enough for me to part with £649.00 for the Black Stainless Steel Case GPS + Cellular version – not that I am going to go surfboarding any time soon. I have muscular dystrophy, which is a progressive physical disability; to all intents and purposes my arms don’t work due to severe muscle weakness and I need to access my smart devices a lot of the time by voice. For many Siri has become the gateway to so much that you can now do on your Apple devices by voice alone – checking the weather,...
Harassed by TV Licensing
My wife and I recently bought a television and for the first time in nearly 10 years we have a telly-screen in the house. We also bought a £147 licence, which in the UK is a legal requirement. The money goes to funding the BBC, and the licence is needed even if one never watches any of the BBC output. Before our purchase we had occasionally caught up with television programmes in arrears via our laptops, but were very careful never to watch or record anything live, as that would have been illegal. Nevertheless, for all the time we were telly-free, we were harassed by TV Licensing. They sent us a regular stream of letters which were all written on the assumption we were watching television illegally. OFFICIAL WARNING, said one, ‘Our Enforcement Division has identified that there is no recor...
Diabetes: an unsweet taste of success
Recent research suggesting that symptoms of diabetes can be reversed by diet comes as no news to me. I don’t need an American scientific experiment with mice to prove the point. I have done it myself and without any extreme dieting. A few weeks ago I went to see my GP after my annual visit to see the diabetes nurse. After tapping some notes into my on-screen file he turned to me and said, ‘I can’t remember ever writing that before “Diabetes resolved”. ’I ought to have you out in the waiting room with a placard saying “It is possible”’. Fourteen months earlier the same GP had given me the bad news. He was concerned about my blood results and he gave me a well-rehearsed talk about diabetes – what it was and what I might expect. I had become the latest statistic in the UK Type 2 Diabete...
